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Dessert

New Haven Commencement Cake

A sweet yeast cake flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon, raisins, and citron, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

New Haven Commencement Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the flour, yeast, grated nutmegs, cinnamon, and eggs. Mix well.

  3. Cover and let the mixture rise overnight.

Finish and bake

  1. In the morning, stir in the baking soda, chopped raisins, and chipped citron.

  2. Let the batter stand for 1 hour before baking.

  3. For added flavor, mix in a little raspberry vinegar or melted currant jelly.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven until golden brown.

  5. Ice the cake once cooled.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and carries flavor through the creamed batter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, lightening the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to release gas, helping the cake rise and brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning during baking.

The step that matters

Overnight rise. The yeast needs time and a warm, covered batter to produce gas. Stopping the rise early leaves the cake dense, so cover the bowl and let it rise fully before adding the baking soda.

Swap the raspberry

The recipe marks raspberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, egg, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, egg, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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